Yashica Robinson, my patients are complex, unique, thoughtful

I am a mother and an OB/GYN. Every day I care for women and honor the decisions they make about their bodies, their families and their futures. I deliver babies, support patients through miscarriage and I provide abortions. Providing full spectrum reproductive health care in Alabama can be challenging. My patients encounter so many barriers, including financial hurdles, shuttering of reproductive health clinics and lack of comprehensive sex education. I am worried that it may get much more difficult.

Alabama lawmakers just passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the U.S. Though it doesn’t take effect until 2020 and will certainly face challenges in court, the message is clear. Anti-abortion politicians do not see women as autonomous decision makers, worthy of determining the courses of their own lives.

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Reckon Women’s Voices

My patients are complex, unique and thoughtful. They are able to make the decisions they know are best for them. Politicians should not interfere in those personal medical decisions.

I am frightened for the women of Alabama should this law and its criminal penalties go into effect. Will physicians be criminalized for providing necessary medical care? Alabama is a state with an unconscionably high maternal mortality rate, with black women’s risk of maternal death more than double that of white women. Reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception, maternal and prenatal care, is something we should be investing in, not restricting, criminalizing or withholding.

Alabamians deserve better. I envision a world in which insurance covers the full cost of comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion, and in which all people have access to the high-quality health care they need to create the families they dream of. I hope that the women of Alabama will one day be seen as the whole, deserving people that they are.

Dr. Yashica Robinson is the Medical Director at the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives.

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